UT Gardens 2016 Best Plants Report
Prepared by:
Dr. Susan Hamilton, Director of the UT Gardens
Beth Willis, Trials Webmaster
James Newburn, Assistant Director, Trials Coordinator
Holly Jones, Kitchen Garden Manager
Jason Reeves, Research Horticulturist, UT Gardens-Jackson
Information is also posted on:
UT Gardens website at http://utgardens.tennessee.edu/
UT Gardens Jackson at http://west.tennessee.edu/ornamentals/
Top Annuals
Best in Show: Capsicum (Ornamental Pepper) Sedona Sun – PanAmerican Seed - New!
Add spice
to the landscape with this wonderful new variety of spreading ornamental pepper. With a 12”-14”
spread and 10”-12” height, this is an ideal landscape bedding plant. It is loaded with upright chili
peppers that are above the foliage. Plants have fruits that are shades of yellow and orange at the same
time for a bright summer display that transitions well into a great fall seasonal look.
Top Seed Cultivars: Vinca Titan® Really Red -PanAmerican A great new color added to this top
performing vinca series. As with the other colors, Really Red is disease resistant, heat and drought
tolerant and blooms earlier than some other cultivars. Rich, true red flower on very uniform plants
makes it ideal for mass planting. Capsicum ‘Hot Pops Purple’ –PanAmerican Seed - New! Little purple
and orange, pea-sized peppers are above the foliage and make for a showy display whether in a
landscape bed or in a container.
Top Rooted Cutting Cultivars: Artemisia Quicksilver™ - Proven Winners - New!
An absolutely
wonderful foliage plant that pairs nicely with almost any flower color in the landscape bed or mixed
container. Known by many as Dusty Miller, this plant has soft-textured, silver foliage and is drought and
heat tolerant and this cultivar is uniform in its growth habit maintaining a low height of 8-10”.
Calibrachoa Superbells® Hollywood Star - Proven Winners – New! A bright fuchsia pink calibrachoa
that is set off with a bright yellow throat surrounded by a band of deep purple. This selection for 2017
has also been bred for disease resistance. Lantana Lucky™ Red - Ball FloraPlant – New! Rich, deep redorange color is an outstanding performer. Drought, deer, and disease resistant, this lantana was a
pollinator attractant and thrived in the heat of summer, and, the color blended nicely into the fall
landscape.
Top Series: Ipomoea,
Sweet Caroline series - Proven Winners – These sweet potato vines love the
heat and humidity so they thrive in our southern gardens. Sweet Caroline now has nine cultivars within
the series with a variety of leaf shapes and colors: from heart-shaped to maple-leafed and lime-green to
copper to in black color. Vigorous grower but takes hard pruning well if needed. Vinca, Valiant™ series PanAmerican/Keift Bright, pure, consistent color makes this series a standout. Vigorous growth habit
and large flowers create mounds of color that can withstand almost anything nature throws at it. Very
disease resistant, heat and drought tolerant in a wide range of colors.
Tried and True: Petunia Supertunia® Vista Bubblegum - Proven Winners -
This visitor favorite
always attracts a lot of attention because of the rich pink profusion of blooms on mounding and
spreading plants which make it ideal for containers or landscape beds. Extremely tolerant of summer
heat, humidity and drought this variety always performs well. Canna ‘South Pacific Scarlet’ is a 2013 AllAmerica Selections ornamental seed winner valued for its heat tolerance, compact habit and uniform
habit that still has us singing its praises.
Awesome Annuals
Angelonia – Always a winner for its heat and drought tolerance Angelface® Perfectly Pink from Proven
Winners is new for 2017 and has a rick pink color that shows up even in bright sunlight. Archangel™
Cherry Red and Archangel™Blue Bicolor from Ball FloraPlant have huge blooms.
Begonia – PanAmerican’s Megawatt ™series is outstanding because of the huge blooms on vigouorus
plants held up with study stems. We tested Megawatt™ Pink Bronze Leaf, Megawatt™ Rose Green
Leaf, and Megawatt™ Red Green Leaf and all performed well. Ideal in landscape beds, hanging baskets
or containers.
Calibrachoa – Performing exceptionally well in Jackson were Superbells® Coralberry Punch™ with its
rich, coral margin and a dark throat with a yellow eye; and, Superbells® Pomegranate Punch™ that is
truly the color of pomegranates with a dark eye from Proven Winners. StarShine™ Pink from Selecta is a
showstopper with a bright yellow star shape contrasting with a hot pink background. Cabaret® Sky Blue
new from Ball FloraPlant was a beautiful soft yet rich lavender blue with a purple center with a pale
yellow eye.
Canna - Cannova Mango is a new color in this series of seed grown, first-season flowering canna from
Ball Ingenuity. Very manageable height of between 3-4’ tall which unlikely to lodge making it a great
landscaping choice. A great addition to the wonderful Cannova series.
Capsicum – Besides the varieties that garnished our top prizes this year some of our favorite ornamental
pepper standouts from previous years still deserve recognition for their outstanding performance
including: Chilly Chili and Sangria from PanAmerican, and NewMex Easter a 2014 AAS bedding plant
winner, we valued the plants where multi-colored fruit stood up above the foliage.
Coleus – Always adding a great foliage color contrast to flowers in mixed containers, landscape beds,
and large hanging baskets coleus are favorite companion plants. Ball FloraPlant had some outstanding
new varieties including: Inferno in a russet-orange color; French Quarter with pink, burgundy and green
classic leaf pattern; and Ruby Slipper in a solid velvety-red color.
Cyperus – For an exotic foliage plant for any landscape that can be used as a water plant or in ground
we love King Tut™ and Prince Tut™ Egyptian papyrus from Proven Winners’ Graceful Grasses® line.
Strong stems hold sprays of fine-textured, hair like leaves up creating a sparkler, fountain effect. Prince
Tut™ reaches only about 2.5’ about half of King Tut™ which can get up to 4.5-5’ tall.
Echinacea - Seed-grown varieties that flower the first year have made a big splash of the past several
years garnering AAS awards and we find they perform well in heat and drought conditions. ‘Cheyenne
Spirit’ is a wonderful mix of colors that vary from purple to reds to soft-yellows and white. ‘PowWow
Berry’ will brighten any garden with its rose-purple flowers. Very floriferous with good branching habit
and uniformity of height. ‘Feeling Pink’ is a 2016 FleuroSelect Gold Medal winner and is a compact
variety (about 20 inches) loaded with blooms. Bright rose-pink flowers contrast nicely with dark green
foliage.
Impatiens - The Big Bounce™ and Bounce™ varieties of interspecific impatiens from Selecta thrive in sun
and shade and are disease resistant to downy mildew. Big Bounce™ Pink and Bounce™ Bright Coral and
Bounce™ Violet 17 are all new colors within their respective series. They get their name because of their
ability to bounce back after wilt.
Marigold - Taishan® marigolds received perfect scores in Jackson in west Tennessee. Valued for their
shorter, stronger stems, and better branching. Taishan® Yellow and Taishan® Orange were evaluated
along with Taishan® Gold Improved a new variety available from PanAmerican Seed.
Pentas – One of the best pollinator attractants in our gardens. Pentas is not only heat and drought
tolerant but blooms till frost too. ‘Graffiti Pink’ and ‘Graffiti White’ from Benary Seed have been on the
market for several years and are excellent varieties as always.
Petunia – New from Proven Winners is Supertunia® Vista Fuchsia Improved. Similar to the tried and
true favorite Vista Bubblegum with its vigorous, mounding growth and season-long bloom but with a
richer, darker pink color. Tolerates heat and humidity with never a lull in flower production.
ColorRush™ Pink from Ball FloraPlant is valued for its vigor that hold up to wind, heat and rain. Also,
available in ColorRush™ Purple. Selecta has a most unusual petunia in Night Sky which is a rich deep
purple but speckled with white when temperatures are cooler in spring and fall. We had it in containers
and it attracted a lot of attention.
Verbena - Superbena® verbenas from Proven Winners are rebloomers that are heat tolerant and ideal
as spillers and fillers in containers. Superbena® Royale Peachy Keen and Superbena® Royale Romance
(a wine red) are both new colors for 2017. The EnduraScape™ series from Ball FloraPlant is valued for
being heat tolerant, powdery mildew resistance, and is more likely to bloom continuously throughout
the summer. EnduraScape™ Magenta, EnduraScape™ Purple Improved and EnduraScape™ Pink
Bicolor are new color colors.
Vinca – Besides the Valiant™ series designated in our “Top Series”, Titan® series from PanAmerican is
also a vigorous grower, prolific, bloomer, heat and drought resistant available in a variety of colors that
will fit any scheme in a full-sun container or landscape bed. Along with Titan® Red, Titan® Blush
Improved was also new this year. Valient™ came in Apricot, Burgundy, Lilac, Orchid, Punch, and Pure
White and all performed well.
Zinnia – Improvements in zinnia breeding include blooms holding their color longer before fading
and larger bloom size. Zahara® from PanAmerican fits the bill on this and XL Fire Improved, XL
Yellow, and XL White were top performers.
Promising and Proven Perennials:
Monarda Sugar Buzz® series - Sugar Buzz® beebalm. This new series from Walters Gardens offers short,
compact plants growing to just 16-24 inches tall and wide that are perfect for the front of the border.
Plants are covered in long-lasting flowers which are great pollinator attractors. These selections form
domes of color with fat 2-inch-plus blooms on plants with candy names: Cherry Pops, Lilac Lollipop,
Grape Gumball and Bubblegum Blast. As cultivars of a native species, they are easy to grow. They
display above-average resistance to powdery mildew and prefer full sun. Hummingbirds, butterflies and
bees are attracted to the plants’ sweet nectar.
Sedum SunSparkler® series – Hybrid sedum. The SunSparkler® Sedum series is an exciting heat-tolerant
group of sedums bred by Chris Hansen. They make first-class groundcover plants, ideal for mass
planting, use in decorative containers, especially troughs, and are perfect for the front of a mixed border
or rock garden. The collection includes SunSparkler® ‘Firecracker’, ‘Lime Zinger’, ‘Lime Twister’, ‘Blue
Pearl’, ‘Cherry Tart’, ‘Dazzleberry’, and xSedoro ‘Blue Elf’ (the first ever inter-generic hybrid between
Sedum and Orostachys).
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‘Cherry Tart’ is noted for its super compact habit, growing only 6 inches high by 10 inches wide
and producing cherry-red foliage and clusters of deep pink flowers in late summer. It is being
touted as “perfect for a water-wise landscape” and for having the ability to retain its color all
summer long unlike other sedums.
‘Dazzleberry’ has impressive dusty-blue foliage and giant 9 inch raspberry flower heads. It
grows 8 inches tall and 18 inches wide.
‘Lime Zinger’ is a more compact sedum, growing only four inches high and spreading 18 inches
wide but is unique because of its bright lime-green foliage which has a cherry-red picotee edge.
‘Firecracker’ is a 6 inch tall groundcover with shiny cherry-red foliage from April thru November!
Plants form 6″ tall and 18″ wide mounds of colorful foliage which combines superbly with other
drought-proof perennials. Firecracker’s compact habit also allows for a multitude of uses
including mixed container plantings on your deck, edging along walkways, and green roof
‘Lime Twister’ is a variegated sport from ‘Lime Zinger’ which has cream-colored edges on every
leaf. No sun scorching.
‘Blue Pearl’ has intense blue foliage make this unique new selection a great choice for landscape
or patio. Remains colorful all summer long, unlike other varieties. Large, contrasting hot pink
flowers clusters dance above the foliage in late summer. Useful as colorful ground cover or
feature in rock garden or container.
xSedoro ‘Blue Elf’ has steel-blue tufted foliage rosettes and numerous lateral branches that
elongate away from the center closely resemble the Orostachys parent. Grows to a very tight
and ultra-compact height of only 3″ tall and will reach 15″ wide. Plants are smothered with
hundreds of dark-pink flowers in late summer.
Penstemon Red Rock® - Outstanding disease resistant cultivar. Tolerated our heat, humidity and
dry conditions. Rose-pink flower spikes with large individual flowers resulting in quite a show.
Compact growth habit at 18-24” required no staking.
Tremendous Trees & Shrubs:
Acer japonicum 'Aconitifolium' –'Aconitifolium' full moon maple. A dwarf, multi-stemmed shrub or
small tree which typically grows slowly to 8-10' tall. Valued for its sculptural form and incredible fall
foliage display of orange to crimson colors. Requires lightly dappled shade in Tennessee. Plants perform
poorly south of USDA Zone 7. Leaves will scorch in full sun in our hot mid-south summers. Prefers cool
summer conditions so carefully select site. Not suited for west Tennessee conditions. Stake trunk for
more erect growth or leave alone for spreading effect. Easily grown in average, medium moisture, welldrained soil. Use as specimen plant where form and foliage color are focal point. Landscape up-lighting
will accentuate the sculptural form and brilliant fall foliage color.
Acer rubrum Redpointe® - Redpointe® Maple. A rising star on the shade tree horizon. Tailored for
today’s streetscapes and landscapes, it’s a heat resistant, vigorous growing, colorful choice for
sustainable landscapes. Determined to be the top performer among seedlings selected in the J. Frank
Schmidt & Son Co. Acer rubrum breeding program it is a pest and disease resistant tree that is easily
maintained. Demonstrated superior resistance to leaf chlorosis. Improved resistance to anthracnose,
spider mites and leaf hoppers are among the attributes of this cultivar. Well-behaved, balanced growth
eliminates the need for a lot of pruning and shaping to develop a symmetrical canopy. A straight,
dominant central leader assures uniformity. Strong branch attachments with ideal angles mean that less
labor is needed to develop a pyramidal street tree shape. Smaller and more refined than those of Acer x
freemanii, leaves are deep green, heat-resistant and fresh looking all summer. Brilliant fall color appears
early and is reliably bright red.
Cryptomeria japonica 'Gyokuryu' – ‘Gyokuryu’ Japanese Cedar. A wonderfully mid-sized Japanese
cedar that is ideal for a smaller landscape. Slowly forms a dense, irregular pyramid 5 to 10 feet tall and 3
to 7 feet wide. A great evergreen for use as a foundation plant, screen, mixed border, or single
specimen.
Distylium - is a relative newcomer to the landscape industry, and the result of years of trials, selective
breeding in an effort to come up with very worthy specimens that are evergreen, adaptable, and
virtually immune to the majority of common pests and diseases. A hybrid from the witchhazel family,
developed and bred to provide selections which have growth habits and sizes that fit a wide array of
landscape uses. Noted for being pest and disease resistant, drought tolerant, wet soil tolerant, and will
thrive in full sun to partial shade. Landscape uses include evergreen hedge, foundation plantings,
containers, and single specimen. ‘Vintage Jade’ is one of the lowest growing selections to just 2 feet tall
and 5 feet wide with an arching, somewhat mounded habit; ‘Cinnamon Girl’ grows 3 feet tall and 5 feet
wide. Bronze coloration and foliage appearance is the main distinction that sets this selection apart;
‘Blue Cascade’ is slightly more upright than other selections growing 3 feet and just as wide.
Lagerstroemia indica 'Royalty' – ‘Royalty’ crape myrtle. A medium sized crape myrtle growing 6 feet
tall and 8 feet wide, covered with panicles of crinkly royal purple blossoms in the summer. Green foliage
turns orange-red in autumn. Dormant plant displays attractive gray-brown exfoliating bark on upright
stems. Nice medium-sized shrub. Great for use in group plantings or single specimen.
Lagerstroemia indica 'Sacramento' – ‘Sacramento’ weeping crape myrtle. A compact crape myrtle,
growing to just 2 feet tall and just as wide. Its mounding, weeping habit makes it great as a ground cover
or as a decorative container plant. It can also be used for boarder plantings and in mass. The rose-pink
clusters of blooms smother this super compact selection and are on display from late spring through
summer. New growth pinched during the growing season will increase branchiness and flower number.
Deadheading spent flowers will encourage a second flush of flowers!
Liquidambar styraciflua Happidaze™ (syn. 'Hapdell') – Happidaze American sweetgum. Sweetgum is a
beautiful tree but most homeowners won't grow it because of its messy fruits. Thanks to this fruitless
selection, messy "gumballs" are no longer a problem. This is a beautiful tree too; the leaves turn lovely
shades of burgundy and maroon in fall and mature specimens develop oval to rounded crowns with age.
Grows 60-80 feet tall and 40-60 feet wide. Easily grown in average, medium moisture, well-drained soils
in full sun. Intolerant of shade. Prefers deep, moist, fertile soils, but seems to tolerate a wide variety of
soils.
Viburnum nudum ‘Brandywine’ – Possumhaw viburnum. A deciduous viburnum whose glossy foliage
turns dark maroon-red in fall. White flowers in spring which become clusters of vivid pink and blue
berries in fall. It will have good berry set without a pollinator plant, but adding cultivar 'Winterthur' will
really amp up the number of berries. Has good deer resistance and attracts birds. Grows 6 feet tall.
Viburnum plicatum tomentosum 'Summer Snowflake' – ‘Summer Snowflake’ doublefile viburnum. A
deciduous viburnum that is perfect for adding seasonal interest in the landscape. Use for spring flower,
late summer red berries, and fall foliage. Perfect in a mixed border or a single specimen in the
landscape. Has an upright growth habit which matures 5-8 feet tall. White lacecap-like flowers bloom in
spring (late April-May), but continue to bloom sporadically through summer (hence the cultivar name)
and sometimes into early fall. Show red berries in late summer. Fruit, a few flowers and autumn foliage
color may all be simultaneously present in early fall making quite a show in the landscape. The dark
green leaves turn burgundy red to purplish red in fall.
Viburnum lantana ‘Variegatum’ – Variegared lantana viburnum. Dark green leaves are flecked with
light green, chartreuse, white that add depth and interest to this slow growing 5-8 ft shrub that
does best in afternoon or full shade to keep variegation prominent with no burning. Tolerates
dry conditions. Fruit forms in clusters and ripens from red to black reminiscent of lantana which
gives it its species name.
Incredible Edibles
Garlic Chives ‘Geisha’, Allium tuberosum ‘Geisha’. With larger flower heads and wider leaves, this 2015
AAS winning variety outperformed the standard garlic chives in the UT kitchen garden this year. Flowers
appear towards the end of the season and are hugely popular with honeybees.
Blackberry ‘Triple Crown’, Rubus fruticosus ‘Triple Crown’. This thornless variety was released in 1997
through a joint breeding program with USDA-Beltsville and the Pacific West Agricultural Research
Service and has become a standard for growers due to its outstanding flavor, productivity and vigor. It
has proven to be sweeter and more productive than the other three varieties grown in the kitchen
garden over the past four years.
Remarkable Roses
Dream Come True™ - grandiflora – One of the most stunning roses because of the pale yellow bloom
that is edged with a ruby-red blush. This rose develops huge flowers atop long stems.
Firefighter® - hybrid tea - Honoring firefighters is especially poignant for us in Tennessee this year. This
beautiful deep red hybrid tea was the first sponsorship rose of the ‘Remember Me’ garden fund – a
program to honor and raise funds for 9/11 victims. An added bonus is the beautiful fragrance of this
selection. A classic red rose with a classic rose smell.
Julia Child - floribunda – This was our favorite yellow rose this year. Our shrub was absolutely covered
with blooms even in the hottest part of the year. Rich, buttery yellow clusters of blooms held their color
well before slowly fading.
Good as Gold - hybrid tea – A favorite with the Beall Family Rose Garden interns in Knoxville this hybrid
tea is as good as it gets. From the bud stage through it bloom period this rose is outstanding. A deep
peach colored bud opens to a yellow-orange classic hybrid tea double bloom that then fades with hints
of a deep- pink blush along the petal edges.
South Africa™ Sunbelt® grandiflora. A selection from the Kordes Sunbelt series that tolerates the heat
and humidity of the South, this rose is a prolific bloomer with large blooms of dark golden yellow.